


Buoyed in Fresh Water

by stickynote_chan



Series: music threads her heart close [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And a bit of Angst as per this series, F/F, F/M, Fluff, No Beta We Die as Men, i want girls having each others backs as a freaking standard in every medium, this is the actual sequel to gentle as my river heart, you can pry Lukanette from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-08-23 17:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20246659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickynote_chan/pseuds/stickynote_chan
Summary: The performance still reverberates tiny tingles from every single toe on her foot to each and every vein in her heart, a pulsating rhythm she can't stop nodding along to. It tastes like release and she savours every drop.Because it's been one year and one lifetime since she’s felt as human as she does now.--Marinette learns to save herself, one step at a time.





	1. Chapter 1

The performance still reverberates tiny tingles from every single toe on her foot to each and every vein in her heart, a pulsating rhythm she can't stop nodding along to. It tastes like release and she savours every drop.

Because it's been one year and one lifetime since she’s felt as human as she does now.

Adrien leaves with a general wave, saying it’s past his bedtime, and Marinette surprises even herself by waving back and not falling to pieces.

Alya, Mylène, Rose and Juleka all give her a _ look _ she pretends not to see. She also pretends not to see the _ Look _ they share between themselves. There will be a _ talk _ and, worst-case scenario, a _ Talk _ later between all of them but Marinette wants to enjoy her night without overstressing over boys (as well).

Cleaning is nonexistent beyond moving the instruments into a storage room. Captain Couffaine flicks off the lights and upstairs is being quickly swarmed with an army of mosquitoes without the flashing neon to ward them away.

So the Captain offers the living room for them to release their creativity, Ivan offers his UNO cards, and the remainder of the group unanimously moves down.

Everyone instinctively mills around the gigantic couch, Luka with an arm behind Juleka who has her pinky clasped with Rose who has her other hand enthusiastically gesturing to Ivan who's patiently listening to her stories even as Mylène tries her darndest to tie his hair up into a tiny ponytail. Or they're sprawled out onto the floor because Nino has to be extra. Alya joins him there because they’re actually made for each other.

(It’s beautiful because they’re _ not _ actually made for each other. Because their futures aren’t lined up by fate or Spirits or Gods. Because they found each other in the midst of their lives and had worked together to create their relationship, had pushed against the chaos of a world filled with the inhuman. Because they had carved out their own happiness with their human hands and human wishes.)

The Captain is bustling around in the kitchen and Marinette's tempted to call her parents to carter because that _ smell _ does not bode well. She shares a look with Juleka who only shrugs and points at the fire extinguisher in a very _ Juleka- _way.

Marinette hides her smile behind her hand. It was so very a Juleka answer, perfect and horrible.

Still, Marinette finds herself sitting on the barstool, anyways, the closest place to sit without actually being _ in _ the kitchen. The fire extinguisher is at her feet because a Juleka joke is not to be taken lightly.

Despite many pleadings to join, she’s content to watch her friends try not to kill each other over a game of neverending UNO. Because while it had been amazing at first to win at something other than video games, by the time the second Akuma had turned around and demanded for Marinette to stop being so _ lucky _ , she had already decided to stop playing. She knows down to her bones that she will always, always, _ always _be too miraculous in card games and, despite Tikki's insistences to have fun and it wasn't her fault, winning streaks suck the joy out of almost any game. And, especially, after the Akumatisation of Max, it feels so wrong.

The consequences of spirit powers in a human world.

So, nowadays, she's comfortable to watch and she's learnt to appreciate the chance to see her friends, even on the edges.

It’s worth it. Despite the betrayals, scandalous backfiring of plans, and all-around groans, there's still the tinkling of belly-aching laughter when someone does something spectacularly stupid, or charmingly poetic; despite the horrors of Akumas and living, there's still unrestrained smiles. It’s the beauty of a light-filled room and a group of friends hanging out into the embrace of late evening. It’s the pleasant curl of a warm hug. It’s being human.

She wants to design this feeling, this contentment of being fourteen and okay, into the folds of a skirt, into the pockets of a jacket, the press of a brightly dyed shirt.

She wants to sketch the patterns of all her friends, happy and smiling. Of herself, happy and smiling.

But having left her sketchbook at home, she’s stuck with fiddling through her bag to find something to occupy her restless hands.

“Try this on, Marinette!” Under the unrestrained shouting of Alya (a reporter used to being loud in an already loud environment) and Rose (the death metal singer of a hard rock band) and Nino (the boyfriend of a loud reporter) as one of them throws down their cards and screams 'UNO' at each other, Tikki's excitable voice is barely a whisper.

The Kwami presses the Captain’s ring onto her finger and Marinette lets it sit on her, tries to get used to metal snug against her flesh and simply can’t. It doesn’t feel right. Or, maybe she’s just too imprinted with spirit-bound jewelry to feel right.

“Maybe something else, Tikki.”

So, she takes it off and Tikki moves it into a pocket, already searching through her bag for something to bug out over.

The reaction to the ring stifles her, brings a cold shiver to her chest. The questioning of why can't she be normal? It circles around her, ice-cold glaciers, frostbite on where it hurts the most.

She wonders how Chat Noir can handle the burden of a ring-shaped Miraculous, of something that binds to his fingers as much as it binds to his fate. It always looks so black and bulky on his thin finger. At least the earrings are small. They're so small, so harmless some days, she almost forgets the weight of the world rests in them. And then, some days, it feels like the voice of a slipping humanity crooning into her ears, a constant reminder of the consequences. Spirit-bound jewelry. How _very_ miraculous.

"Marinette!" her friends call to her and she turns to them with a raised eyebrow, smile in place.

"Marinette, tell them I’m an honourable purveyor of truth!” Alya shouts, standing up and spreading her arms out as she strikes a pose as prideful as a rock star to a stadium of cheering fans.

Everyone boos back.

Marinette knows without a doubt that Alya had cheated somehow. Marinette has seen her play too many times to not know that Alya is a dirty, dirty card games cheater and that her little siblings are absolute terrors in the Césaire’s Game Nights. Marinette had never seen a three-way war look so brutal nor underhanded.

Nino, the only other survivor of Game Nights, is pleading for her to not encourage his girlfriend.

“You’re the champion of truth,” Marinette dutifully says, smiling back when Alya beams. Girlfriends’ Honour. Always backup your bestie in public.

Alya crows and everyone groans.

And for some reason, Marinette simply can’t recall why the ring was such an icy terror. Plenty of people didn't like jewelry.

So she decides she can simply feel appreciative of a fashionable accessory, can even learn how to design jewelry because it _ is _ interesting. (Can play with the slide of Luka’s ring when they somehow, accidentally and not so accidentally find each other’s hands again. Because they’re two for two since meeting and she’s, maybe, looking forward to the feel of his rough fingers against the palm of her hands. Just a little bit.) But she doesn’t have to wear it. Doesn’t need to love the press of jewelry against her skin.

It’s when Tikki and her are trying to find something else to play with that someone slides a stack of papers onto her lap and offers a coloured pencil and eraser to her.

It’s easy to know who it is. The black chipped nails makes it obvious.

“Luka,” she says in acknowledgment, in thanks, and with a question in her smile even as she takes both the light blue pencil and eraser.

It’s a bit strange to see him without a guitar in his hands or strapped to his back. Like a puzzle-piece missing-

But, no, it’s not like he’s bound to his passions, this isn’t like a cartoon where they’re characters with props attached to them as a shortcut to show off their aspirations, like they’re single line descriptions beginning and ending with their career goals. Marinette feels a sludge form in her stomach for placing him under her expectations like that, it’s not like she goes around with a sewing kit. Luka was human like everyone else.

(And maybe, just maybe, in the deep recesses of her heart where she can be truthful to at least herself, she knows that it isn’t just the hypocrisy sparking this outburst but the fear; the fear that Marinette will only ever be important as Ladybug.)

Like the rest of Kitty Section, who were basically drowning in sweat by the time they’d finished, he’s changed out of his Jagged Stone shirt for, of course, another Jagged Stone shirt. (And isn’t it just a flattering delight, the deepest of satisfaction, when it’s the one Jagged had commissioned from her.)

“I was sharpening the pencil so it took a bit,” he says and it doesn’t answer her unspoken question but it’s a sweet answer anyways. It feels like she swallowed blue sunshine. “I hope it’s alright that it’s not lead.”

“That’s fine,” she reassures, immediately, and then asks out loud, “How’d you know I needed this?”

“You’re a creative soul, Marinette, I think everyone who meets you can hear it- see it, I mean. You’re a wellspring of creativity ready to have fun in the world,” he says very dramatically and then grins. “And, I also asked Jules.”

She laughs, is no less floating on the inside because, even with the joke, his words are sincere. It’s in the way his eyes remain clear blue skies; it’s in the way he _ looks _ at her. Like she has starlight written across her face.

“Thank you,” she says, chest fluttering.

The papers flutters along with her heart as she piles it onto the table instead of onto her lap and, in the glint of the light, she spots the music staves on the back. She flips the stack over and spreads them out like a detective case. Some of them are already half covered in notes. Obviously, she can’t read any of it, the language of sounds, of black circles and lines, but she doesn’t need that to know to throw away any creation, even the ‘bad’ ones, weren’t right. With a quiet hum, she drums her fingers along his work and stares at him.

“Uh,” he says, “we don’t really have plain paper and I thought it’d be better than lined ones. Sorry if jams up your sess’...”

“Oh, Luka that's not it,” she says, shaking her head. “Aren’t these your music sheets? Don’t you need them? Or at the very least keep them for later?”

He blinks, as if the thought had never occurred to him or simply at her rapid-fire questioning, and says, “Don’t worry about that, Marinette. Maman bulk buys these every couple of months. And, if Kitty Section didn’t recycle every bad draft, The Liberty would be The _ Library _.”

She snorts and then quickly covers her face. “That was _ awful _. It doesn’t even work in French.”

“Oh, I know,” he says. “I'm quite the pun connoisseur, you see. Got to have _variety _so Jules can say she’s going to murder me every other day.”

“I’ll make you _ suffer _,” Juleka says then, it's unclear whether it was directed towards Ivan or Luka. Juleka is a high-class multitasker, a sophisticated goth, it's probably both.

Luka grins at her and Marinette resists the urge to encourage him but ends up smiling back anyways.

“Seriously, don’t worry about those,” he gestures to the half-filled sheets and then points at his head with a dimpled smile. “The tunes will always be up here anyway.”

She hums but shakes her head. “You shouldn’t get rid of these, anyways. It’s not good to lose any of your past works.”

“How about I take a photo of them, then?” he offers, holding out his hand for a shake. Her hand twitches to take it even before he finishes. “Then we’d both keep our own creativity.”

“Alright, I’ll take the pictures and you keep these,” she says, resolute and final and very quickly, reaching out and shaking his hand before he could even comprehend her words. His ring slides against her hand. His fingers are cool and rough. She can't find the will to let go. Ever. When he opens his mouth to probably argue, she barrels on, "What do you think about chokers?"

Luka closes his mouth, stares at her, at her neck, right into her eyes with his galaxy-wide ones and blushes.

She blushes too but only because he says, "I think you’d look very pretty in anything, Marinette."

(That’s a lie. She blushes because it’s Luka.)

* * *

And if they keep their hands clasped together even after the handshake? Well, no one else has to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're bothered Text Practice and Interlude (https://archiveofourown.org/works/20281159) gives a little text message exchange between Mari and Luka but it's not important to the main story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She lets her worries rest because Luka’s a nice person, a really pretty, attractive boy, and his smile makes her flowers bloom in her heart. It climbs up her chest and spreads her happiness on her face, like blue clematises.

Sunday morning begins with an Akuma, a little girl who wanted ten princess dresses but her mother didn't have the money nor the leniency to give her _ ten _ dresses and, well, Hawk Moth was a terrible, _ awful _person.

The first time Ladybug had realised she had been fighting a child, she had been overcome with horror, had almost puked up her insides when she realised that the Akuma was possessing a little kid, one barely four years old. This was before she knew how much the spirits needed from her flesh and body, from her fourteen year old mind, from her human soul when they tried to fix balance and this was one of the first signs. Probably the first sign of how much she had needed to change from that soft and clumsy girl named Marinette to protect Paris.

When the visage of the Akuma had finally faded away that first, horrible time and she saw that tiny boy sitting on the ground, staring back at her with wide, confused eyes, the weight of the Earth latched its depths onto her and she ultimately saw the distance of how many she was responsible for.

He was only a _ baby _, she had thought then and nausea gripped her stomach tight and furious as she quickly gathered him up in her arms and calmed him with gentle rocking, humming a lullaby she'd learnt when she was a child, too. She tried to reassure him he would be alright and Papa was coming soon and it didn't do much good. He still cried for his father and Ladybug wanted to call for her Maman.

Chat Noir’s ring chimed and she knew he had to leave, she _ knew _ but it still hurt when he flashed her a strained smile. He left but not before he gave the boy a head pat like he was a dog or something. Ladybug had not been entirely impressed but she couldn’t stress over Chat _ and _ worry about a crying child. Priorities.

She still remembers everything crystal clear to this day and that boy's fears are the first of her nightmares.

"I'm scared, Ladybug."

There's bile gathering at the back of her throat and it tasted like the end of the universe. A black hole sucking out the temporary joy she had just found of protecting Paris and instead instilling her with the cold, dead and empty plane of only _ duty _ and _ responsibility _ too heavy for a brand new superhero. The bitter tang of this brand new altitude stayed with her all day even as the father finally came and thanked her for her services.

There’s bile in the back of her throat and she thinks it’ll never really fade.

She had cried when she realised it wasn’t just people her age and children getting prayed on but adults, too. It hadn't been a good day for her.

(She’d managed to stumble into her room after de-transforming, furiously scrubbing at her face as she pretended she was just wiping away dust from her eyes. By herself, on her bed with her blankets and Cheshire Pillow, and Tikki had excused herself to recharge upstairs in the balcony, and she’s glad. She’s glad no one but her ears and her eyes had seen her as she bawled her eyes out like the children she had to protect now. That Paris didn’t have to see their superhero as anything less than trustworthy.)

It was the final graveyard and then she knew that no one in this city was safe. A sun had exploded hot and ugly behind her eyes as not only classmates, not only children, but everyone became someone she had to look after. People like her parents, like her teachers turned from those she could turn to for emotional support even if she couldn’t tell them the details were now more victims she’ll have to fight if an Akuma ever captured them.

Every adult who hurt, every teenager who emoted, every child who threw a tantrum. All casualties for Hawk Moth to abuse.

She has a city to protect and every single person inside it is her charge. And, now, the only being she can hold onto and whisper her fears of being fourteen and having to fight children a decade _ younger _ than her and adults several decades _ older _ than her is the God who had given her this responsibility in the first place.

There are Gods in this world and Marinette knows, without hesitation, without contempt, with only resignation now, that if Hawk Moth hadn’t used a Miraculous to get his way, they would have let this injustice go because it wouldn’t have interfered with their _ balance _.

Hawk Moth is a _ despicable _person but the Spirits can’t be blamed for being inhuman.

Lucky Charm drops a giant needle pin into her hands and Chat Noir and her look at each other.

“The rope,” Ladybug says and Chat Noir is already running for it, intune with her mind.

It’s easy, then, to defeat the Akuma because needles and threads are _ her _ thing but it’s never easy to look at the aftermath, at a small kid who couldn’t help themselves and _ feel _ and because of that they were taken advantage of.

The mother is crying into Ladybug’s arms after the ordeal and the Miraculous Cure is done. She hadn’t stopped crying since Ladybug had found her trying to fight her Akumatised daughter, armed with nothing but her haggard bag and a glint of a pissed mother in her eyes even as she bawled her eyes out, screaming to Hawk Moth to let go of her baby.

“How are parents supposed to discipline their children without that _ stupid _man ruining it?” she asks, letting go of Ladybug to properly cradle her daughter. The girl had fallen asleep as soon as the Akuma was released and her Maman appeared so the Akuma Victims Support group would have to wait for her to wake up before approaching. “So many children will have to grow up with their parents too scared to raise them right.”

There’s bile in the back of her throat and it tastes like fairy tales disappearing.

“I’m so sorry,” Ladybug whispers and can only bow her head to the still crying mother and to her tiny, sleeping daughter. To all of Paris and, now that she’s thinking of it, to all the world because she’s not stopping the Akumatisation, she’s only reacting to the casualties. It's been a year and she hasn't stepped any closer to defeating Hawk Moth completely, or even _ finding _ him.

_ It’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not enough. _

God plays in her blood, makes her stronger, perfects her body, she’s barely-maybe not always-sometimes completely not human and yet she’s still failing everyone.

She swings away when the earring’s _ beep _ interrupts whatever the mother could say.

* * *

It’s Monday and, after shutting off her phone and throwing herself at her work the rest of Sunday and the exhaustion of a complete day’s work is just enough to stave off her existential crisis, Marinette is now googling how leather works behind her poetry textbook, sketching ideas into the secret folder on her tablet, and contemplating whether blue accents work better or teal.

She’s thinking teal patterned into the curl of waves.

And, of course, that's when Alya nudges her.

“What’re you making this time?” she asks, a little too loud but, thankfully, Mme. Bustier is distracted by the yelling outside of class to notice, and Marinette narrows her eyes.

“Something,” she answers, short and sweet, to which Alya raises an eyebrow.

Alya has many different eyebrow raises and this one is screaming _ Try me, girl _.

Mme. Bustier leaves the room when the yelling escalates into _ Yelling _ and Nino swings around and shoots Alya a grin which smooths out the eyebrow into a pleased smile. Marinette is grateful and Nino directs his next look to her way because Nino and Alya are adorable and in love but Nino and Marinette have been friends since école maternelle. Because Marinette knows him in the way she will always gives him Mille-Feuille even when she brings macarons for others and he knows her in the way he can still point out exactly where she stitched hidden signatures into her clothes. Because even though it’s more Nino-and-Alya and Marinette-and-Alya than Nino-and-Marinette nowadays, it doesn’t mean the memories of staring at each other over the cover of a fairy tale book isn’t still buried in Marinette’s mind. It’s only a little bittersweet.

Adrien follows Nino because they’re trains on the same track (or duck-drien and mother duck-Nino as Alya would say) and turns to Marinette with a curious smile.

“What are you up to, Marinette?” Adrien asks and she expects the rush of emotions to flood her system, expects it, anticipates it and resigns herself to it as she waits for her tongue to tie itself into knots.

“Just something I was brainstorming yesterday,” she answers, easily, a little flushed but she can still breathe which is the improvement of the _ year _. For some reason, it doesn’t feel like a world ending revolution.

“Oh, alright,” he says, easy, charming, Adrien-esque. “Show me when you’re done, it’d be awesome to see your work again.”

Her cheeks pink but she can smile back without combusting.

“Sure,” she whispers back as Mme. Bustier comes back in and it feels final in a way when he turns around and her heart isn’t exploding. It still simmers, just a little, but it doesn't boil over like the love of her life had just graced her with his presence. Like it would have three days ago.

Marinette is many things, clumsy with her hands, too lucky in card games, overweighed by the thought of turning into more than human, but Marinette is not dumb. She can hide it under the disguise of a denial and say she's totally not thinking about Luka with every image of black leather, like she hadn't stared at a blue flower on the way to school and thought about his dyed hair and shinning eyes, but the fact of the matter is that _ she is _. She is and she doesn't know what to make of it.

Loving Adrien felt like an era of single minded intensity and now it’s changing. It’s shifting into something she doesn’t understand. Her thoughts flick to Ladybug and she wonders if this is written into her destiny? But it didn’t feel that way, her earrings aren’t singing in the same way as Chat Noir and Tikki. It’s barely a hum over the voice of Mme. Bustier. There’s no broken ground as she stumbles her way through the Earth tied to her feet. There’s only a puzzle in her heart but it’s not stitched into the fabric of the world. She knows the difference between what is and is not and this doesn't leave her shaking.

But she doesn’t know what to do. For the past year, the only significant Change in her life meant a Kwami turning her into something _ worthy _.

Marinette knows why it hisses like fear.

Alya nudges her with a wink and grin and Marinette can only give her a smile as glistening as pearls. Alya is a good for an amatuer reporter, a good best friend, but she doesn't (can't) match Marinette-Ladybug’s panicked-fuelled best and especially when she’s not distracted by a cute boy.

It's unfair and it makes something crawl along the back of her neck but Marinette has the advantage.

* * *

“Luka,” she says, barely able to breathe as she spots him on the school steps. She is _ never _more glad that the class had stayed behind for PE.

He’s tuning his guitar and it’s not the electric one he had at the Music Festival. This one is round and acoustic and a deep blue colour she’s dying to replicate. He stops strumming to look up at her with a smile and now she’s dying to _ that _ . But... not in a complete body-contorting way. In a cotton candy sweet way that tastes new and paper thin. Delicate. Or, maybe, _ soft _ is the better word. It’s his blue eyes, reflecting the afternoon warmth, as he stares at her like she just made him happy by simply calling out his name.

It’s strange because even though the era is changing and there’s still an almost-hiss in her head, his presence still opens a gentle river in her chest. It feels nice. To see him in gentle sunlight, to hear his guitar, to feel happy in seeing him and not be driven to humiliation.

“Hey, Marinette,” he says, patting beside him.

With movements entirely subconscious and it’s a little crazy to not overthink in the presence of a cute guy but she plops down right next to him and crosses her ankles like a normal girl. She breathes out and it feels easy, like watching the clouds cross overhead. He starts plucking at a song she doesn’t recognise but it sounds like walking through a garden of blue hibiscus and like the smell of spring after a sunshower.

“What brings you here?” she asks.

“Sorry, I probably should have called or texted but I, uh…” he trails off and shrugs with one shoulder; the next notes nervous fast. “Anyways, I wanted to ask if you’d like to go see this leatherworker I know. I noticed most of your designs were leather so I thought you’d like to see a pro or something.”

Her lips edges up until she can’t stop smiling at him. Every meeting really does affirm it; he’s a nice person. Sweet to the core. She stands up and offers her hand to him. It takes a minute to tuck his guitar into a bag and slings it onto his back but no time at all for him to take her hand with a returning smile.

She pulls him up and watches as his eyes widen when he realises the Ladybug strength laced into her deceptively tiny arms.

Super suit and Kwami enhancement aside, but swinging from rooftops to rooftops and fighting crime almost daily has muscled her into something lean even as Marinette. And, well, baking has always been a very good workout, look at Papa's arms, look at _ Maman _'s arms.

(Kim had been wiped away a proud tear when she accepted Alix on her bet and picked him up, princess carrying all the classroom to the cheers of their classmates.)

"Woah," he says, a little breathless and she's definitely too pleased with the way his eyes light up at her. "Strong _ and _ talented."

“Thanks,” she says.

Her head is a gentle background noise when she finally lets her worries rest as he directs them across Paris to a small workshop and to a middle-aged woman with hands made of steel but a soft voice as she greets Luka with an unbelievably endearing, ‘_ My little cabbage _.’

Luka blushes darkly when the woman pats him on the cheek and instead introduces her to Marinette when she asks if he needs another wristband.

“This is Joséphine. José, this is Marinette,” he says. “She has these amazing designs that’ll need your expertise and I was hoping you guys can _ duet _.”

Marinette groans and he holds an admirably straight face until she staunches her best _ unimpressed _ look at him and then he cracks and smothers his giggles behind his hands.

“I’m Joséphine, call me José,” the leatherworker introduces herself with a firm handshake and there’s power in her hands. There’s enough power to feel the _ thump _ she claps on Luka’s back when he continues to giggle and which only serves to make him choke, snort and then laugh even more openly. José and Marinette share a look entirely made of exasperation and the bane of too many puns. She shakes her head and says, “Let’s see your work, hun.”

It’s a thousand and one coincidences and the Kwami in her bag is giggling, but she lets the worries rest because it leads to Luka helping her hair up and winding her hands around her neck as she puts on her brand new choker. It’s only the end of the day and she has her first prototype of a new fashion accessory because José is crazy good an, between her snarky comments, she’s amazingly patient as she guides Marinette’s clumsy hands around working with leather. Luka joins the impromptu lesson when José sniffs and says he hasn’t made anything for himself since he was thirteen.

“What would you when I’m old and creaky and finally retired, huh?” she harrumphs, closing her eyes and crossing her arms, but Marinette can see her love when she peaks an eye after him when he turns away and her tiny smile when he goes to the closest to pick up a dusty brown apron.

“Rubbish, something like _ old age _ won’t take Joséphine Kühn down. I’m sure you’d still manage to make the best leather works even when you’re eighty,” he says, an ease to his words that begets how many times the two have gone through this argument. “So I hope you don’t mind me relying on your graces for a long time.”

José gives him another _ thump _ on the back. “Flattering little cabbage. What happened to the little boy who cried when he thought he was never going to see me again? Bring him back, I miss that one.”

Luka only laughs and steps right next to Marinette. Despite her leading questions, he refuses to tell her what he’s making, hiding it behind his big hands whenever Marinette even tries to take a peak. Marinette sticks her tongue out at him everytime and his smile curls like the delicate wisp of clouds.

The choker Marinette eventually makes after pinching her fingers ten different ways is plain black, made of a particularly thick piece of leather she had fallen in love with. Accenting it were large bulky silver hoops and buckles that José had made Luka run out to grab from her wife’s shop next door. It fits well around her neck and Marinette is in love with the feel, already wondering how she can plan out a new outfit based just on accentuating its place against her throat.

José takes a good look at the finished product and nods. “We can polish it up some next time but for your first attempt, you did really well, little doe.”

“She likes you,” Luka whispers to her, letting go of her hair as he steps around to look at the choker too. He gives her two thumbs up. “It looks amazing, Marinette.”

She lets her worries rest because Luka’s a nice person, a really pretty, attractive boy, and his smile makes her flowers bloom in her heart. It climbs up her chest and spreads her happiness on her face, like blue clematises.

Because when he drops her off home, he hands her a wristband, the shade of soft brown like her favourite milk chocolate. It slips around her wrist a little clumsily but beautiful.

* * *

**Luka**  
  
8:15 PM  
**Luka: **Did you have fun today?  
  
**Luka: **Sorry I didn't tell you beforehand  
  
8:18 PM  
**Luka: **It's not an excuse but I forget about these sort of things a lot  
  
**Luka: **Hope I didn't interrupt you  
  
**Marinette: **You don't need to be worried!  
  
**Marinette: **I wouldn't have gone if you were interrupting anything  
  
**Marinette: **And it was very fun!  
  
**Marinette: **José is amazing!  
  
**Marinette: **Thank you for taking me out  
  
8:24 PM  
**Marinette: **And next time just give me a nice text :)  
  
**Luka: **Next time?  
  
**Marinette: **Yeaah?  
  
**Luka: **Yeah :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy did this chapter took a while cause now I'm actually trying to do plot without the show to rely on.
> 
> Also AUS Netflix has still only released s2 part 1 so like I might have missed a lot of things for the rest of s2 and stuff for s3 because I haven't seen them yet. Besides the salt fics which are amazing. Also yikes the gifs and things I've already seen from ML_Spoiler tag on tumblr.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, she might be running but if having a clear schedule will give her the time to actually think about love, about Luka properly, she’ll take it.

She spends the rest of the week going through a backlog of homework, Class President work, fashion work and portfolio work she’s been accumulating for the past month, and she’s not running. She’s _ not. _She just needs to clear out her jobs.

So she shakes her head to every outing invitation, even when Alix nudges her and says Adrien will definitely come to her rollerblading tournament. Instead of trying to explain the emotional mess that was Marinette sixty percent of the time and now felt like a flame horizon of eighty percent, she points to her To Do Immediately List, all three pages of it, and says she really has to at least finish this before even thinking about going out to have free time.

Alix skates backwards out of the room with a salute and a badly hummed funeral march. It’s awful but it makes Marinette laughs anyway.

She’s not running, she just needs to finally finish her work.

Luka texts her on Wednesday, asking when she would be available again and she snaps him a photo of the list along with a sad crying face.

**Luka: **Could you wait for a bit, please?  
  
**Marinette: **Of course

It takes three hours and, by that point, she had stopped checking her phone incessantly to actually work but, eventually, he sends her an mp3. file titled _Marinette _ and it’s her song, the one he played at the Musical Festival with the same guitar he used then but this time it’s layered over a fast-paced drum beat and a bass line and she’s in awe. She’s in awe and her heart stutters when she hears the awkward little ‘Good luck’ murmured at the end as if he wasn’t used to singing over his own music.

She keeps it on loop throughout the week and sometimes it becomes the only thing between having a massive stress down and throwing her textbook through a wall. So she’s only a little surprised when she checks and it's already bumped out Jagged Stone’s _ Punk Rockin’ _as most played track on her music list.

She sends him a screenshot of that too and he texts back a line of blue and black love hearts.

So, she might be running but if having a clear schedule will give her the time to actually think about love, about Lukaproperly, she’ll take it.

* * *

“Were you active in the Revolution, Tikki?” Marinette asks, flicks through her history chapter without really reading because there’s a limit to how many times she can see ‘the women were flogged’, ‘she was imprisoned’, and 'a large majority were executed’. There are too many words and too little all at once. It's mentioned sentences, offhand breadcrumbs, an extra footnote to the other horrors. It shouldn’t shudder her as much as it does, reach her as much as it does. It does anyway.

“Revolution?” Tikki asks and Marinette wonders about how long she sleeps or returns to the spirit world or is laid dormant between moonlighting as her Chosen’s armour and power. To grace the world with her divinity.

(Was there even a care for the mortal world in Tikki when she’s quieting away in these earrings?)

Was the French Revolution even that long ago? Was anything happening now going to last a second for Tikki? Would the lifespan of a human even last as long as a blink in the eyes of Gods? She knows the answer already and it leaves her cold and alone; in the eyes of an everlasting being, probably not.

Marinette sinks her nails into her hand, crescent moon red into her palms, and the pain is enough to distract her from thinking about it. But the frozen tundra doesn’t leave her blood.

“The French Revolution,” she says and tries to explain it as much as possible without devolving into a musical. When she’s done, she asks again, “Were you active then?”

Tikki giggles at the question and Marinette feels a gnaw on her mind but she can’t blame the Kwami. She knows (knows too well) that Tikki doesn’t understand. Of course, she wouldn’t understand recent human history and the layers of human connotations. She’s thousands of years old and so far beyond the sight of silly human notions like the unnecessary spilling of blood and the horrors of executions.

“Oh no,” she says. “Of course not, Marinette. We Kwamis don’t deal with human affairs. We’re only active to balance the misuse of the Miraculous and, sometimes, little spirits who grew too big.”

Marinette bites her lip to stop from saying anything that might bring a gleam to her spirit’s eyes. Marinette had only ever seen it once, when she questioned too much about past Chosens. It’s a gentle reprimand, all things considered, from the ever friendly Tikki as she just barely lets the visage of human care and concern dim, lets Marinette remember she's talking to a God. That even if her body is graced by their essence, it doesn't mean she was _ one _ of them. She’s surprised that this current line of questioning was even tolerated but Tikki was sometimes more want for curiosity than want to keep secrets.

(And if it brings a little relief alongside the horror, if the horror itself is the relief, well that was for her to decipher through on what it means for her.)

A few questions lingers along the edges of her lips but the way Tikki casually chirps ‘human affairs’ like an afterthought leaves cold and chipped fingers curled around her throat.

“Oh, okay then,” she says, snipping the conversation, quick and quiet.

Tikki nuzzles against her cheeks.

* * *

She dips her toes into the swimming pool and lets the warm water relax her before slipping the rest of her legs in. It'd be nice to go in completely but she's content to stay on the edge until the others are done.

She’s finally finished everything, just in time for the girls to burst open her phone messages with ten thousand pleas to hang out at the pool. Alix hadn’t been able to make it.

“_ Brother’s birthday _,” she had rolled her eyes.

So now she's here and it she still hasn't really thought about Luka but it's girl time and girl time means girl fun.

Alya, Rose and Mylène is a vague understanding to her right, hidden somewhere in the frankly gigantic playground area and waiting for the ringing bucket to fall. 

Juleka sits down beside her left, quiet and calm, purple-dipped hair a beautiful wet glow under the LED lights and glister of water. Blue reflections sketches soft scales onto her skin and Marinette resolves to actually begin on the Couffaine Dragon line when she gets home. Her eyes are deep and red, and she's gothic as graveyards even in her black and purple swimsuit and gentle as a snowy mornings in her expression.

But Juleka always did look extra lovely bathed in the light of water whether it be river or rain.

“Done?” Marinette asks.

“Yeah,” she says, flipping her hair into Rose's towel. The silence between them drips, pools for the right moment. Patience, she has learnt long ago in Juleka's presence. “Did you want to come to band practice?”

_ 'Are you sure _ ?' she wants to ask impulsively, maybe _ 'Do you know about this thing between me and your brother _ ?' or even _ 'Why _?'

But she knows Juleka, not as much as Rose not as close as Ivan or even Mylène but _ enough _, so she answers, "Yes, thank you."

"Cool," she says.

The bucket tips over and, even from their spot, Marinette can hear the ringing laughter of her friends as they shriek and call out to each other. She smiles instinctively at their bright delight and crooks her lips up to her cheeks when Alya stumbles from the playground, arms linked with a red-faced and giggly Rose, while Mylène follows behind them much more sedately but her body language laughs for her when her quiet voice can't.

Rose tumbles into Juleka's waiting arms, still giggling but calming down enough to whisper excitedly into her girlfriend's ear.

Marinette knows this too. Knows that if Juleka looked lovely in water by herself, she looked most breathtaking pressed shoulder to shoulder against Rose, pinkies finding each other like a promise. Two shades layered against each other.

Marinette had witnessed Rose and Juleka from the beginning as friends in CE2 to crushes in sixième. Seen the first time Rose had gotten a gleam of realisation and fluttered like a thousand petals whenever she stood next to Juleka. Seen the way Juleka had begun and still continues to look at Rose first and sometimes only her when she can't bear to bring her red eyes to look away from the sunshine that was Rose.

How after two years and a brief daydream with Prince Ali, Marinette had witnessed the day when Rose finally clasped Juleka hands between her own and said she loved her deeply, proudly and completely. Witnessed how Juleka had brought her hand up and kissed it, tender and precious, as she said she loved Rose too, eyes filled with wonder. Marinette hadn't seen what happened next but she didn't need to. They're happy and together.

There's different threads of love, Marinette is coming to realise, and this one is named Juleka-and-Rose.

"Marinette!" Alya calls out, hair wayward and sparkling with droplets of stray water. "You should _ so _ see the bucket, it's _ awesome _."

"Next time!" Marinette answers, pulling on her pink goggles and swim cap. "Let's go for a lap first."

She takes a deep breath and slides the rest of the way down into the water, completely submerging herself into the rush of small tides immediately. Passing through the gate of land and into the press of a floating pull.

Alya will follow with freestyle and Mylène will probably dip in for a quick circle near the shallow end. It's the way things have formed between all of them.

As she begins to swim, her heart settles into a steady backdrop her in her ears. It’s always a surprise when she remembers it's not silent or even quiet here, it’s a world of different sounds in the underneath. A strange plane of filtered light and liquid and a lingering kaleidoscope of noise. The pink goggles turns everything into a beautiful pastel.

A lap won’t take long but it’s enough time to run through Juleka’s invitation three different times in her head. Completing a well-worn obstacle course around the anxiety, circling through the self-consciousness and then finally finishing on an acceptance that doesn't always sit right with her but does this time. Because even when Marinette doesn’t trust herself, doesn’t trust how high she can swing before her humanity finally snaps, she can trust her friends.

It’s peaceful even when she comes back up to the land of air and sucks in deep, refreshing breath. The smell of chlorine pressed between her lungs.

Alya is a five seconds behind her and jumps out of the water like a mermaid of vengeance, a tidal wave flopping around her in a magnificent splash. She takes Marinette by the wrist and drags her to the playground just as the bell rings.

Marinette follows her but stops to offer her hand to Juleka as the two of them splosh out the water. Juleka looks at her hand, up to Marinette herself, and smiles before taking it.

* * *

A _ talk _ she’d been dreading since the Musical Festival does happen when Alya and her are painting their nails with the worst neon colours they could find. But it’s a soft talk. Because it starts with,

“How you feeling girl?”

Alya asks this out of the thousands of words she could have said and Marinette loves her so much.

So she paints her thumb and says, truthfully, “Like things are going too fast and I’m about to get sucked into a whirlpool. Like I’m wishy-washy. Like my feelings for Adrien were fake and these ones for Luka are going to be false too.” She blows on her completely painted thumb and looks up. “Like I’m a bad person.”

Alya immediately ruins her work by cupping Marinette’s face between her half painted hands, probably smearing nail polish onto everywhere, but that doesn’t matter because she says, “_ Listen _ here, no _ listen _ to me.” 

And Marinette listens,

“You can like many people or no one at all, Mari. You can be crushing on someone for a year or two days and it fading does _ not _ mean you’re fickle. Your crush on Adrien was kinda crazy, a kinda _ mania _ love, but just cause it changed when you met Luka doesn’t mean you’re a _ bad person _ . That stuff happens. It’s normal. And even if it isn’t, you’re my best friend and trust me to know, without a doubt, that you’re an _ amazing _ girl even still.”

Marinette laughs and then cries and knows this moment isn’t a part of world balance but it means the world to _ her _.

“I was kinda crazy when I was in love with Adrien,” she agrees, trying to joke and ruining it with her sniffling and she knows everything will be okay.

“Yeah, girl, you were crazy,” she says. “And it’s alright if you’re changing.”

She leans forward and rests her head onto Alya’s shoulder.

There’s different shades of love, she’s come to realise, and this one is called Alya-and-Marinette.

* * *

Her dream is floating through space and the whisper of someone kissing her name against her cheek. Pink under her eyelids.

She keeps her eyes closed, willing to wait for the surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done! Yeah this doesn't feel complete yet but the stuff I've written next just doesn't feel right here and I really like ending it here too.
> 
> Also I am not bitter at the show for their treatment of JuleRose. Or whatever the heck is happening with Lila and Alya.
> 
> Sorry I wasn't clear about this before, but, in this fic, it's been a year since Marinette got her Miraculous. So instead of it being her final year in collège as shown in canon, it'd have been quatrième year for her. (I think in US it's Grade 8? Australia it's Year 8 but we have combined middle school and high school so it might be different.)
> 
> (Fun fact: French middle school and high school years count in descending order from sixth/sixième. In high school its seconde/secomd then first/première and ends in a final year called 'terminale'.)
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who commented and kudo'd!! Love you all and hope you'll like the next instalment of this series <3

**Author's Note:**

> Google Docs title: "ml: moving on from a crush shouldn't hurt, its release of forgotten scars"
> 
> Come to my new [ML Tumblr](https://stickynotechan.tumblr.com/) for a chat :)


End file.
